


Steve's Portraits

by azneraCarenza



Series: Diaries of the Avengers [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Arty Steve, Gen, Tony is useless (if well intentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 11:59:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azneraCarenza/pseuds/azneraCarenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve paints/draws whatever he needs to get out of his head.</p><p>All characters belong to Marvell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steve's Portraits

I still missed her.  
I knew it was no use dwelling in the past, but still. I had never had that dance. Coulson told me that she passed away a couple of years ago. I had visited her grave once, just for a while. I sketched her face, determined not to forget her. A beautiful woman who went to war. She was so strong, wanting to do what was right, desperate to be respected, even though she was a woman. She got there eventually, becoming a founding member of SHIELD. The agents still talk about her as a mother figure to so many of them, even if she was the most terrifying woman they had ever met.  
I missed him too.  
Bucky had been my only friend through my years as the pathetic boy I was. Why he put up with me, I don’t know. He had defended me from bullies, set me up on dates and generally looked after me, but I failed him. I couldn’t save him. The amazing Captain America, super soldier, and I couldn’t save a single man.  
I kept portraits of them. Tony had provided me with everything I could have wanted, paints and pencils and the like, and so I put them to use recreating my past. When I had flashbacks, I would paint them. If anyone crossed my mind, I would sketch them. I owed them that at least, to preserve their memory. I didn’t think anyone else would understand, so I didn’t show them. My gallery built up, my walls slowly becoming more and more covered. As time went on, I drew my past less to focus on the future. I’d find myself drawing Tony sitting with his arm around Pepper, Clint firing arrows, Natasha dancing, Bruce working out his formulas, Thor with his lightning. It helped me to move on, I think. Drawing them got them out of my head and onto the paper, to a place where I could revisit them, but they weren’t always weighing on my mind. It wasn’t a great solution, and it wouldn’t work forever, but it was something to keep me going for now. Even if I still cried for Peggy now and then, if I still woke up screaming for Bucky to take my hand, I carried on.  
My pictures were my own for a long time, until one day when Pepper came to find me for a meal I had somehow managed to miss. She had read my file, and so she knew who they were when she entered. Once she got past the initial shock of my wall being plastered with faces, she studied each one. I knew then that I had to show the others. Rather than making them think I was stuck in my past, they could help me remember my friends.  
I took them all down to my room, to see the pictures. Tony exclaimed over my pictures of him, unsurprisingly, Thor and Clint looked at the scenes of the war, Pepper and Bruce looked at Peggy and Bucky and exchanged sad looks. They understood my loss at least. Natasha was the one who surprised me. She went straight over to a sketch of Bucky, and muttered something in Russian. Clint looked at her strangely, but she just moved on. I didn’t ask.  
I felt like they understood better now. They had seen my memories, and they could interpret my moods better now. Even when Tony found me holding Peggy’s picture, tears running down my face, offered to help me take my mind off things.  
Of course, this being Tony, he did that by taking me to the most obscene strip joint he could think of. Some people just didn’t get it.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it :) If you have any prompts for these diaries, please leave in a comment, or find me on my tumblr at donotheyjudeme. Thanks :)


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